Use this information to help you identify what skills you need to focus on with your student during reading and listening exercises. This site also has other articles like it that help raise awareness about the learning process.

In the article below and others that follow it, Developmental Psychologist Dr. Marilyn Price-Mitchell offers tools on how to help children develop the following life skills: curiosity, sociability, resilience, self-awareness, integrity, resourcefulness, creativity, and empathy. Since these skills are needed for a lifetime, I think this information may be helpful to adults as well.

want to develop the new skill, understand something, or gain new knowledge

understand what they need to do to get there

believe they can “do it” with effort and perseverence

feel good about the challenge before them (isn’t too hard or too easy)

enjoy themselves while they are learning

progress in their knowledge/ability at a steady pace

apply their knowledge or use their new skill

trust the source of information

feel confident that they can, through effort, succeed

Unfortunately, most schools today emphasize and reward verbal-linguistic (reading/writing), logical-analytical (math and science) and interpersonal (social) skills. The minority of students who excel in these areas (IF they also have great short-term recall skills) are disproportionately praised and recognized because they seem to have “all the right answers” in class and do well on multiple choice and other tests. Sadly, they and most of society see these students as “gifted” and “smart” people. Not what they truly are: able to do better than their peers in these areas. This view is reinforced through the competitive, test-taking model of instruction that often ignores other measures of “knowing” that are just as valuable to our quality of life.

The “unsung talents” I’m referring to include: creative (artistic) people who are good at brainstorming and seeing “new ways” to do things, persons who work well independently (intrapersonal), the people who make our lives easier and more enjoyable (kinesthetic, musical), those who seek to save us from harming ourselves and other entities (naturalists, existentialists) and combination of these forces that we depend upon for our lives and quality of life.

For this reason, I say: “No more teaching to the test; instead, let’s see all students’ best!”